education general summary

I didn't have to be politically passionate. I didn't have to be interested in politics. But politics was passionate about oppressing and controlling me. That's what school is. It's not liberation. It's not enlightenment. It's not help. It's not opportunity. It's not community. It's command and control.

Every single politician who has faith in this education system is a crazy authoritarian.

Kids have options, do they? Cause I wasn't told about them.

If you believe in democracy, then you believe in the wisdom of the crowd, and if you believe in the crowd, you should believe in an education system that believes in children and serves children, which means giving them what they want, as opposed to telling them to do what a few people in power want.

Nothing should be compulsory apart from check-ups. Just as you go for dental check-ups and health check-ups ideally, kids should go for education and life check-ups to make sure they're happy and know their rights and have basic skills and knowledge.

Take the entire school system that does not have a physical presence and delete it in your mind. No more exam diet. No more timetables necessarily. Just books, buildings, computers, rooms, equipment and humans.

Now imagine a humane education system. Maybe you can't do that. But I can. Here we go.

This is not radical. This is sensible. Politicians have had plenty of time to figure this out, but they just didn't do it because that would be hard and they're interested in their own power, and not that of the people.

A humane education system — exactly what it will offer in practice — cannot be completely described by a political leader, because the main job of a political leader is not to be a dictator that paints their vision, but to provide canvases upon which people can paint their own.

The processes of education need to be truly democratised.

Democracy isn't enough, though. You also need competition to reward and spread the practices that are truly the best. Therefore, while democracy means that educational experiences will vary and some may be better than others, the free system that kids interact with is refined according to what produces the best outcomes. By outcomes, I mean actual life outcomes and surveys, not exam results. Exam results are not meaningful outcomes. That's not attainment. Attainment happens in the real world. The primary attainment is happiness.

Therefore, educational practices should adapt according to what is found to lead to happier lives.

You need research, development and experimentation to find what is best, so long as it is approved by government, the kids and their parents.

The vast majority of what the current education system provides is unnecessary. Few skills taught in school are essential. All the budget spent on making kids do things they really don't need to, and can do on their own, can instead be spent quite experimentally.

I was taught skills and knowledge in school that are generally necessary, but I could have and should have just taught them to myself. That would have been much more efficient for both me and the taxpayer.

The world is not going to collapse if you don't make kids do art, make kids do gym, make kids do advanced math, and make kids do drama and maybe learn engineering and French and Spanish while barely caring about whether or not that's actually a good use of their time.

I don't know if politicians know this, but the individual matters.

The world will actually get a lot kinder and more productive when school stops being careless.

Think about the origins of the current school system. Think about what existed thousands of years ago. It doesn't have to be like this.